My Resolution
by Mystic25
Summary: Fill-in-the-Blank to "The Werther Box" Spoilers for the Episode.
1. Chapter 1

"My Resolution"

Mystic25

Summary: Fill in the blank to "The Werther Project"

Rating: T for imagery, language, and situations.

* * *

 **xxxxXxxx**

" _It's true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them."_ _  
_

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe _The Sorrows of Young Werther_

 **xxxxxXxxxx**

* * *

Dean bent low with a creek of his knees and reached inside for a book that looked old enough to distentergrate if he looked at it cross-eyed. He retrieves it with a ' _what the?'_ expression, turning it over like he was trying to read the half rubbed out markings on a bar of soap, then door to the Box with a final slam.

 _"Dean-"_

Sam said Dean's name around the blood loss that hung over his eyes like low lying fog. His gashed arm is choked off from more blood flow by a dirty blue bandana and the Werther Box stands like the pyre on consecrated sacrificial ground, and Dean is holding the Codex without the true realization of what he found.

Sam blinked grit from his eyes, swallowing down explanations that want to come out from a loose tongue created by hypovolemia and the spell Magnus created to protect the Werther Box. He stared at Dean with a vision fragmented in an aurora more painful than his former migraines while the blue bandana continued to drink the blood from the gashes in his arm. He doesn't remember reality for a moment, he must've said Dean's name again as stretched out as pulled twill because he came back to the world by the feeling of Dean's hands holding to his neck.

"Hey- Sammy!-"

Dean slapped Sam hard again against the area that still stung from time of moments ago when he had done it before. Sam jerked back like a defibrillation.

Dean grabbed Sam's shirt when his brother began to loll backwards fast enough to crack his skull against the stone floor of the basement. "Hey, _no!"_ Dean shook Sam harder. "Don't you do it!" He grabbed at Sam's neck again, and the muscles there felt like they'd been replaced by rubber. "Come back- _Hey_ -!"

Sam's eyes opened inches from Dean's face, staring into the haze of his brother that he could see, trying to form the resolution in the sinews of his muscles to move and snatch the Codex from Dean's hand, to keep safe what he drained nearly half of himself for. But the means of obtaining the object he wanted resulted in the weakness that prevented him from moving anywhere but in a downward slide towards the concrete.

" _Sam!"_

Dean calling his name was like a hand jerk that drew Sam back up; and this time he made a grab towards the book with a flail of arms and a weaponless hand.

"Hey, Sammy! Sammy- _stop!_ " Dean reached and grabbed at his arm, digging his fingers into the free flowing blood, making Sam white out any other sense except that and the need to escape the sensation. "It's over!-alright? It's done-"

"You're done." Dean's hand is back on Sam's head in a movement that glides over his mind with rough callousness.

"The book-" Sam says this on a voice half drained away from blood loss.

"Book's fine man," Dean flipped the book over like he wanted to burn it right there on the basement floor for all the carnage it wrought to get it out of its hiding place. "You're not. C'mon-" He fully clamped his hand down on Sam's cut flesh adding more pressure and pulled himself up onto his feet, taking Sam with him.


	2. Chapter 2

**xxxxXxxx**

" _I don't care. Because you are my brother; and I'm here to take you home."_

-Sam Winchester

"Supernatural" Episode: "Reichenbach"

 **xxxxXxxxx**

* * *

Sam wobbled like a wedge trying to stand on its apex end, half braced on the wall and half braced on his brother, feeling the stickiness of the blood permeating through the bandana and onto Dean's clamped fingers.

The walk up the basement steps wasn't hell – but it was agony, Sam felt like a glass half empty thrown into a turbulent ocean, nausea wanted to make him black out at each step, only 10 years' worth of resolve kept him from doing so, dragging him upwards in awkward steps until they are both topside at the first level of the house.

There's rope on the floor and a broken chair and the jagged weapon end of a broken bottle that spun at Sam's feet that Dean does his best to steer him away from with more than a healthy amount of cursing.

"Almost there, c'mon," Dean pushed them both forward towards the painted wooden door that leaks sunlight from two small top square windows.

A flash of blue moves into Sam's parallel vision and his movement hitched into an aftershock that stopped Dean in a jerk.

"Whoa, hey-" Dean grabbed onto the stumble before Sam took them both backwards. "Sammy" Sam's face is a circular ' _oh'_ of startled shock. " _Sam!"_ Dean twists as much as he could without removing his grip on his brother. "It's not real- _Hey-"_ Dean pushed Sam into a wall of crumbled paint and dried stains of blood and jerked Sam like was shaking water out of an old raincoat "Listen to me!-"

Sam jerked again and stared at Dean like he had just remembered that he wasn't walking alone.

"It's not real-"Dean jerked his fingers into Sam's slashed arm "This is," His fingers pressed Sam's blood onto the bandana in a blot. "You lost too much blood for me to ream you again man- I need you to hold it together, _okay_?"

Sam gave a breath that trapped the words in his throat before bobbing into a loose nod and an "okay." He grunted as Dean hauled him away from the wall and his world shrank down to his rough edged breathing and his parallel view of Dean's flannel shirt sleeve slung under his shoulder pulling him harder to the Impala that was sitting in a squat patch of grass down past the wooden porch.

When they reached that far, the old wood didn't take Sam's weight leniently or let him walk down the stairs without steps that would make a newborn colt look at him crooked.

They clear the grass in stumbled strides and make it the passenger side door of the Impala. Dean opened it with a squeak of the heavy Detroit steel and pushed Sam into the well-worn leather, leaving Sam to sit half in and half out with long legs and boots planted into the earth and grass.

"You okay?"

Dean's voice floated somewhere above his sitting position.

Sam's lightheadedness reached an apex squeezed all of his consciousness to a tiny point at top of his head, like someone was trying to juice his brain out through his ears.

' _I'll be needing that Codex Sammy.'_

"Sam?-"

 _'Otherwise, Dean will be worse than de'd. to you now wouldn't he?'_

Sam jerked forward and vomited half onto the grass and half onto the tailgate of the car.

"Sam!-" Dean jerked him up hard enough that the next mouthful of vomit wound up being swallowed back down. His arm burned as Dean pulled back the bandana to check for more damage and infection.

Sam blinked down at the wound which looked large and nasty with blood matted flat against his sweat streaked skin. "

You need an ER man," Dean wound the bandanna tourniquet tight around Sam's arm sending an instant jolt of needlelike numbness racing up Sam's extensor muscles to the tips of his fingers.

"No-Dean," Sam swallowed another round of bile down his throat as the clinging bits of the Magnus' Spell flashed the wide set smile of Rowena across the wrinkles of his brain "I'm good, I'm okay-"

"Sam, you just horked all over my car, you didn't even do that after those ghouls nearly snacked you to death." Dean produced another bandanna, this one as red as the blood that was leaking out all over Sam's flesh and wrapped it tightly around the gashes. His expression held nothing but sharp seriousness. "You're a lot of things right now Sammy, but _good_ isn't of them-"

"Dean I slashed up my own wrists," Sam's breaths were hard for him to swallow like a pill going down sideways. "An ER is just going to put me on a psych hold," his elbows met his knees in an ungraceful fall.

"I got wounds on me too Sam, and you slashed middle of the road enough to mimic defensive wounds-" Dean said this like he was talking about a scraped knee that both of them got when tumbling down a hill on their bikes.

Sam heard the trickle of lying flow into Dean's words. "Dean-"

"We get an intern young enough, we can pass this off as a fight escape-"

"And what if it doesn't work?" Sam said this while staring down at the bandana tied to his wrist already getting sodden with blood. Dizziness spread itself up his throat like the lingering bad taste of cheap liquor.

"If it's a choice between you crashing down on hypolivemia and a plan fail Sam, then I'm blacking out the first option-" Dean said this without any form of hesitation. He would never hesitate when it came to Sam.

"I slashed up _my own wrists_ man," Sam repeated with more emphasis. He raised his head to a world that swirled around him like a still wet oil painting. "No one came at me-"

"You were under a _spell_ Sam," Dean cut in.

"But it was still _me_ ," Sam said into the air that gradually drew Dean's face back into focus like someone sharpening the image on a television set. He saw his brother's green eyes drop into gradual grains of emotions that formed into a solidity of something that was already refusal to believe. "It was my knife-"

"Sam-"

"It was _my_ knife, Dean," Sam watched Dean's mouth closed on the words that his own had prevented Dean from forming. "It wanted my blood, and I was going to let it have it _all_ , to sa-to stop the spell, to save you Dean-" Sam swallowed away the words that almost escaped his mouth, eyes ghosting over the Codex for the Book of the Dead that Dean was unware that he was clutching in his hand. "I can't lie about that man, not tonight-" he swallowed something that wanted to become more noxious bile, hearing Rowena's voice taunting him, not sure if it was a real memory or the still lingering effects of Magnus' spell. "I just can't."

The refusal in Dean's eyes gave way to something that was equal parts concern and equal parts an emotion that hurt too much to name. " _Alright-"_ he stared through the opened doorway at Sam. "We camp out here until you get your sea legs back, but you turn even the slightest shade greener and I'm handcuffing you to the wheel and driving you to the nearest ambulance bay, understand?"

Sam managed a laugh. "Got it," He listed sideways, caught by the metal of the door frame, letting his eyes drop closed in a moment of hard won relief. His eyes dragged open when he felt Dean drop something against, and looked down to see the Codex resting against his chest. The cover was a crumbled off white, like someone had split an old cinderblock in half, and covered in a line of symbols that looked even too old to even be Encochian. He pulled it open with a hard creak, his hand scrabbled over paper so old it almost crumbled under the light weight of his fingertips. He loosened his grip a little, and moved his eyes over the symbols that were unreadable to him, but ones that his sight devoured like he was a starving beggar given an offering of food.

Something cold tickled his hand; this sensation was chased by Dean's voice.

"Here," Dean pressed a full bottle of water against Sam's knuckles. "You need to top off."

Sam looked up and took the bottle from Dean's hand with a quiet "Thanks," but still saw that Dean hadn't moved so he cracked open the bottle, cold water spilling out onto his hands. He closed the Codex and pushed it out of the way before any water could spill on it and damage the pages.

He felt Dean watching him the entire time he did this. "Look man, I know finding that book was a Hard Win, but it's not worth your life-"

 _I need the Mark of Cain off my brother._

"So hydrate first alright-"

 _It's very much worth_ Dean's _life; isn't it Sammy?_

"Sammy? Hey, you hearin' me?-"

Dean's voice was a hairline trigger question, about to keep Sam within tracking distance.

"Sorry, I-" Sam squeezed his eyes shit, grit that had collected in the corner of his eyes, scratching them when he opened them again. He cleared his throat in a shudder that shook him for a moment before he regained control, aware that there was no way Dean hadn't seen it. "I guess I lost more blood then I realized."

"Yeah, no kidding," Dean's voice was too even to be much of a real reprimand. "That's what that," he gestured to the water bottle in Sam's hand. "And these," he held up three more full water bottles "are for." He set the bottles at Sam's boots on the floor boards of the Impala. "I'm serious, man, they had all better be drained when I get back or I'm tapping a vein and juicing them in you."

The words: _when I get back_ played louder in Sam's head over everything else Dean had just said. He looked up from the bit of evening sky that he could see from above the roof of the Impala at his brother. "Where are you going?"

Dean reached over to the part of the Impala that Sam couldn't see and picked up a rubber headed sledge hammer. "That makes two strikes Magnus racked up about you-that's two strike too many man- I'm going to go handle it." He hefted the sledgehammer up over his shoulder and gave Sam a grip on the shoulder that was less of a slap and more of a squeeze before moving away from the car and back up the grass and the stairs they had just stumbled down.

Sam watched him go without protest. But his eyes watched Dean the entire time he moved across the lawn and up the wooden stairs; the rubber end of the sledge hammer melted into Dean's silhouette from the last vestiges of the setting sun. Sam watched until Dean disappeared behind the screen door, pulling his phone out with a grunted gasp from his jacket pocket to rest on his knee. He waited for a count of five minutes before he allowed himself to move his gaze back down to where he had pushed the Codex onto the seat next to him.

He picked it back up and it opened with the same creak as before, the same undecipherable text stared back up at him, almost taunting him for how close he was to saving his brother.

He picked up his phone, first scanning it for any texts or missed calls from Dean, which was met with a blank screened reply. He then opened up a blank text message, typing in a number from memory before typing out the message:

' _Meet where we said'_

He hit send and after the message was transcribed as ' _delivered'_ he erased the text message and contact number from his screen.

A harsh banging screech of something solid hitting metal echoed from somewhere in the house.

Sam held phone in his palm, his silent debate of his next move ending with the noise of an incoming text on his screen:

 _Still alive._

Sam punched the reply with his thumb.

 _Need-_

The pause between this text and the next one was very short:

 _You hydrate. That's what I need. Out soon._

A dry sort of chuckle escaped Sam's mouth; he glad to be able to actually laugh at something. He closed the Codex away once again before he allowed himself to finally drink from the first bottle of water that Dean had given him, each swallow going down in a cold slide down his throat. He felt no better after drinking half of it, or even after he drank _all_ of it. But he had had enough experience with blood loss to know that he didn't get some fluids into him he was going to severely pay for it later. He tossed the empty bottle out into the grass and reached down to grab the next one, cracking open the cap.

He drained three of the four bottles, and was halfway through the fourth before his stomach gave off warning sounds that it had had enough. He grimaced the last mouthful down before recapping the bottle; if he made himself throw up, the water wouldn't do any good.

He opened the Codex and set it back into his lap, opening it to a new page that pulled out in wide folds like an accordion, trying to see if there was anything that he could read or even _attempt_ to read. But the encryptions did not yield to any language base he could understand no matter how many pages he turned through.

Despite the 80 ounces of water he'd just downed he still felt weak and holding the book began to become too hard for him. He had no idea how much blood he'd actually given up to the Werther Box, he'd lost count after the bowl shaped reservoir looked almost over halfway full.

He leaned in a slump up against the side of the opened passenger door, craning sideways so that he could give the steel more of his weight. His arm burned from the gashes, and he almost still felt the rough squeeze of Rowena milking his veins to get him to bleed faster.

Except it had never been Rowena at all.

After leaving the house the hold Magnus' spell had on him began to loosen like a fraying piece of cloth making him realize that Rowena was the spell of the Box messing with his mind. The Werther Box protected the Codex by making those ill-fated enough to come near it want to off themselves, hitting them with pain so great that suicide was the only way they could escape that pain.

Each instance of this pain was tailored for the person the spell came in contact with. For Suzie, it was the crippling guilt of her being the only one out of her entire family to survive that day she accidentally released the spell from the Box.

But for Sam, no matter how messed up he got, going out by his own hand was never an option-unless it was an option for saving his brother.

From the moment he made the first gash with the knife into his flesh down all he thought about was saving Dean, because it wasn't about ending his own life, it was about _saving_ his brother's life. It was a suicide that he was too blind to see.

Dean had said it a long time ago for them now, how it scared him about how far he was willing to go to save Sam. And in the years they had driven down since that moment of admittance had only increased this loyalty for both of them. It had gotten them both to a point where living without the other was as much of an option as living without a beating heart in your chest. It didn't matter what it took, they had to stay together, even if what it took was something like this.

Underneath the bandana and the fabric of his shirt sleeve he felt the wounds he had self-inflicted pulsated in agreement to his thoughts. Blood began to visibly up through the red fabric. He pressed a hand down to the wound briefly in the same manner that he had seen Dean too whenever whatever it felt like to wear the Mark of Cain became too strong and began to throb to remind his brother that he wore it.

Sam kept pressure on his wounds for several moments, feelng stickiness cling to his fingertips. A loud clang echoed from behind the front door of the house and it burst open in what looked like an explosion of metal.

A large piece of heavy metal sprouting the denim clad legs of his brother underneath it walked itself down the stairs and around to the side of the house.

Sam lowered his hand and slid back into his jacket to cover up the stains of blood over his shirt. If Dean saw it there would be no talking him out of going to a hospital, even though he knew Dean could sew him up with as much of a practiced eye as any doctor, he just didn't trust himself to with the Mark branded on his arm. But Sam trusted him, and would rather take the risk of his brother than lying to a bunch of MD's in white coats with an overzealous need to pump him full of ant psych drugs.

By the time he had managed to get into one sleeve and was hacking away into getting into the second one Dean had reemerged to the front yard and caught sight of what Sam was doing. Sam stopped for just a moment, watching as Dean did the same before he walked with a bit of a faster pace up into the house and came back out with the last dissected parts of the Werther Box in each hand, taking the same path he had before back around the side of the house.

Sam watched him do this one final time half flipping through the pages of the Nadia's Codex to keep himself looking busy and together enough so they could get the hell away from this house. He leant up more against the frame of the door, continuing to flip through the pages, the runes beginning to blur together under his eyes.

The next time he glanced up after hearing the sounds of footsteps on the grass the sky had turned to night with only a haze of stars that tried to struggle their way out from behind thick clouds.

Dean approached the Impala, the sledge hammer slung up over his shoulder.

Sam blinked up at Dean as he drew closer. "Over don't you think?- I mean, we stopped the spell, the box is just a box."

Dean moved to the trunk, opening it with a thick squeak and tossed the sledge hammer inside. "Well, now it's scrap metal," he closed the lid of the trunk in the night air that was overhung with the scent of smoke and burned metal, walking over the uneven dirt and stood in front of Sam.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm great," Sam shifted up off the doorframe to look up at where Dean had leant himself against the car.

"You road ready?"

Sam had no idea how much time had passed since Dean had first went into the house. His senses felt hung in a weird sort of limbo, unable to decipher if the sun had set in a singular moment, or if this was a second or third rotation.

But he looked up at Dean and lied. "I'll be fine," his lie could not disguise the pain that reduced his face to a squint too quickly to hide from his brother.

"It says something doesn't it?" Dean looked down at Sam with a bit more concern after that moment. "Werther's spell splits us up and an hour later we're both on the brink of death. Dean watched his brother breathe for a moment, testing the frequency to make sure it ranked up to someone who said they were 'road ready.' "Sorry about yesterday, going rogue on you like that."

Dean was still looking over at Sam; but Sam was no longer looking at Dean, but at the night and the dead grass. "You know Dean, don't apologize," a laugh that felt overly dry escapes his throat. "Think that makes us even," he flicked his eyes up to his brother then away quickly. Sam's senses were still overlaid in the last dredges of the spell to fully trust himself to not give away the lie in his eyes to Dean. They would never be even, not until Sam breaks to the Book of the Damned to save Dean, not until losing his brother is no longer a waking, every moment nightmare.

"Think the universe is trying to tell us something we both should already know," Dean stared down at Sam who had leant up against the side of the Impala, feeling the tug that always came when he stared at Sam when it was just them. "We're stronger together than apart," he slapped Sam a little too hard on the shoulder for someone who had freshly slashed knife wounds, and Sam grunted in response. But the feeling of aliveness that grunt brought to Dean was worth it. He left his brother and walked a slow path around the dirt to the driver's side of the Impala.

"Now what could be so _valuable_ , it takes a spell that nasty to protect it?" The Impala door opened under Dean's hand with a familiar squeak of metal.

"No idea," Sam reached out with a grunt with right hand, feeling the pull of the Dean's bandanas wrapped high and tight around his arm as he closed the passenger side door. "Whatever it is, we'll keep it safe," The knife wounds at his wrist burned as he held up the Codex with a sting that seemed to say _liar._

Dean glanced once more at him but didn't further question, cutting on the horse power of the engine and pulling away from the yard.

"What about Suzie?" Sam's said this in a bit of stunned afterthought moment, remembering the body that was still in the house, what used to be a woman who lost her entire family became a shut in all because of a spell that was never intended for her in the first place. With everything concerning getting the Codex he had all but forgotten the dead woman who he had brought to her death.

"I left her where she was," Dean took the Impala out onto the single one way in one way out road that drove them past clearings and cow pastures dotted with only a sprinkling of other houses. The sky grew darker as they drove. "The gun was still in her hand-even if it was the spell that did it, she still shot herself-"

"So you left her there-" Sam cut in, not in a question. "Without even burning her bones?"

"She lived remotely Sam, but not remotely enough for that." Dean said, watching the night before watching Sam. "I don't like it any more than you do man, but burning her bones would've just aroused suspicion and I won't bring that kind of storm down on us, on _you_ -" He turned to Sam fully. "Not after everything you did to find that damn box so it could be destroyed."

The tips of Sam's fingers brushed over the cover of the Codex in his lap, and he swallowed something that hung thickly in his throat.

"Hey," Dean glanced at him in unmasked worry. "You still don't look like Mr. Fantastic there Sammy-" Dean glanced back to the road only briefly to keep the car on the road before staring at his brother. "Why don't you close your eyes? I'll get you up when we reach the Bunker."

"Yeah, sure," The limbo of Sam's emotions began to sway dangerously, whatever spell Magnus had used still clung like grit and glass digging into his wounds trying to inflict pain on him to get him to tell the truth to Dean if he wanted the pain to end. He closed his eyes against the feeling, pushing himself back into the side of the Impala door, letting out a breath like a balloon deflating.

The adrenaline that had been pumped in him from the events at Suzie's house had emptied out of him and his moment of pretend sleep drifted into actual sleep with dreams bordering on visions of Rowena standing with Dean at the end down a long gray bricked hallway. Sam screamed Dean's name and tried to run down the hallway, but not matter how much he ran, he could never reach where they were.

 **[** _"Is this what y'er looking for?" Rowena stroked the flesh of Dean's arm like his hallucination had done to him, fingertips gliding across the Mark._

" _Get away from him!" Sam's yell echoed as the distance between them finally began to close._

 _He reached only two steps away from Dean before gleeful, manic laughter escaped her painted lips as Dean raised the arm she stroked, the Blade grasped in his fingers._

" _You're too late Sammy." Rowena's laughter grew louder as Dean's eyes slid from green to solid black as the knife thrust itself outward_ **]**

"Sam-!"

Sam flailed backwards at the hand gripping his shoulder.

" _Sam,_ hey! _Sammy!_ Calm down," The shaking grew harder. "It's me!"

Sam's eyes flew open like a bridge hit with flood waters, slammed back into the interior of the car with a jerk. He Dean's hand was on his shoulder staring at him from the opened door of the car. "Dean-"

Sam realized they were no longer moving and Dean had managed to drive them up into the garage of the Bunker with its bright halogen bulbs without being aware of it. His injured throbbed painfully, and when he looked down he saw why: The bandana had half come loose and was starting to bleed heavily.

"You were out the entire ride, you just started screaming and thrashing when I pulled up," Dean's eyes were in full on concern, hands moving quickly to secure the bandana back around Sam's bleeding arm. "Nearly tore apart your wounds -"

"What'd I say?" Awakeners poured over Sam like someone had dumped ice water over him. He sat up, reaching to undo his seat belt, getting his hand caught up in it. "Did I say-"

"Hey, take it easy," Dean grabbed his hand on the seatbelt, and undid it himself. "I couldn't make anything out except you saying _no, no no._ Scared the shit out of me man- _"_ Dean stared at Sam with his wide eyed look still in place, but sliding into a familiar look of concern that Sam had seen all his life. "Blood loss and Weather's spell really jacked you up bad."

"I'm fine," Sam swallowed up a grunt as Dean rotated his arm to get a better angle at his cuts.

"Yeah and I'm Robert Dinero," Dean returned wrapping the bandage tight again. "I'm stitching these up and pumping you full of everything liquid we got in the bunker before you even think about saying those words again-" He grabbed Sam by his jacket and hauled him out of the car, dropping the Codex onto the seat.

"No Dean wait!" Sam crouched back into the car in a half angled slide, pulling up the Codex to him with long fingers, grunting in pain as he did so. "We can't just leave it here-"

Dean pushed Sam way like inside the basement and snatched the Codex out of the seat. "I got the damn book Sam!" He hauled Sam back up from where he was half leant up against the car, looking him over with a hard breath for what Sam had just done, his expression completely taken over with concern, voice lowering with it. "C'mon-" He tucked the Codex tucked his arm and supported Sam away from the garage.


	3. Chapter 3

**xxxxXxxx**

"So don't you worry, you'll be **my resolution**."

~Mathew Corby "Resolution"

 **xxxxXxxx**

* * *

It was 6 am when Dean creaked Sam's bedroom door open to a full darkness created by no windows. He stepped over the concrete and approached the bed where Sam was lying flung on his side white shirt sleeves, blanket up over half of his body.

Dean manipulated Sam's arm and checked the white pressure bandage that was wrapped around the twenty field sutures it had taken to close the gashes Sam had inflicted on himself. Satisfied with the no blood leakage, he lowered Sam's arm back down onto the mattress. Sam hadn't roused the entire time he did this, but his breath was even and steady. Dean set a hand flat against the back of his brother's head for a moment to check for any fever indicating infection. Sam's hair was damp, but not hot. He backed his hand away, rubbing at his eyes for a moment, sleep pulling at him, but ones that he fought down he and Sam had long ego established the 5 Hour Rule when it came to serious injury. Whoever wasn't down would keep an eye on the other who _was_ every hour for the first five hours to make sure that they remained alive. They made it back to Kansas in at 1 am, so this check marked the last hour, five hours and Sam was still alive.

Dean moved over to the chair Sam had in a corner of his room that he used to watch TV, but that Sam used mostly for reading. He set the white covered Codex on top of the chair's seat cushion before turning back to look at his brother's silhouette turned away from him.

"You earned this damn thing Sammy-you'll keep it safe better than me man," he watched Sam breathe in and out in his sleep for a long moment before walking out the door and closing it behind him, turning the bedroom back into full darkness.

Dean's footfalls echoed down the hallway to his own room.

Sam lay on his bed not moving, eyes opened, listening for 10 minutes before he heard no other sound then pulled out of his bed in his shirt sleeves, jeans on his legs. He climbed up off the bed and threw on a shirt from his closet. His jacket hung over the heater condenser by his bed and he reached into his pocket, pulling out his cellphone.

One new message displayed from an unknown number:

" _This better be about what we discussed. I'm waiting."_

Sam deleted the message and slid into his jacket with a wince, reaching for a piece of scrap paper and a pencil that sat in a little caddy on the dresser. He scribbled a quick note and picked up his boots and walked out of room with them gripped by the laces in his hand. He closed the door and walked down the hallway in bare feet, looking in on Dean's room which had the door opened partly, Sam suspected, to be able to hear him. Dean was flopped on his stomach asleep in the same clothes he had worn all day yesterday.

He crouched down and slid the paper in his hand under Dean's door, baring a note that said:

 _Going out for supply run, I'm good._

Sam drew back up to his full height, taking one last glance at Dean, seeing the peaking of the Mark visible through the rolled up section of his shirt sleeves, watching his brother for a long moment before backing away.

He continued to walk down the black bricked hallway until it ended at doorway with a set of winding steel stairs. He laced up his boots and followed them down a level, opening the metal door of the garage, moving past a long line of cars including the Impala, until he came to a maroon Chevy Chevelle. He climbed inside the car, smelling a musty leather smell. A small sachet of molded potpourri hung above the rearview mirror. He reached down and pulled apart the wires on the ignition console and wired the car to start. The Chevelle's motor took a minute to turn over, coughing as it did so, but then came on and stayed that way.

Sam back the car out and drove it down the center of concrete down to the left until he came to an opened space with a curved winding path of concrete. He followed it down until he came to a gated exit that came out behind the Bunker. He punched a code into a key pad above the gate and it opened and he drove the Chevelle out onto the street, the gate shutting automatically behind him.

 **xxxxXxxx**

Sam was recessed in shadows, leant up against the stone bricked when the metal door was thrown open with a squeak of its hinges that were half frozen in rust. A slim figure in a dark traveler's cloak glided down the steps with almost no sound.

"Well _hello_ , Car Boy," Rowena moved past Sam to the bottom level of the abandoned building who's broken windows Sam had spray painted in Demon and Enchocian warding symbols. He waited until Rowena moved a few paces in front of him, the skirts of her dress held up in her hands, before he followed her at a slower pace, arms held behind his back.

The witch gasped at what she saw. "You got it!" She moved at a quicker pace, with an audible click of her heeled shoes on the floor, moving over to the long dusty table to where Sam had laid the Codex, flinging off her cloak and tossing it into a chair that sat next to the table.

He watched Rowena bend over the book, touching its cover and flipping through its pages with noises of reverence.

"Is it enough?" Sam approached her with heavy steps of his boots, stopping barely a foot away from her.

Rowena made a noise of clucked annoyance. " _To what?"_ She glanced at him with a flip of her burning red curls like he was fly that had flown in her face.

Sam stopped walking, watching the witch fiddling with the pages. "To translate the _book,_ find a cure for the Mark."

"Oh _ay,"_ Rowena said with a rippled amused laugh laced in her Scottish accent, like Sam was stupid for asking her such a thing, never taking her eyes off the pages of the Codex.

"Good." Sam removed his hands from behind his back and locked an iron manacle around her wrist before she even had the chance to right herself. Rowena whirled up from the pages of Codex and Sam used her stunned movement to take ahold of her other arm and lock it with the remaining manacle.

Rowena stared down shocked bafflement at the iron manacles etched in lines of spell work, the same ones had been used on her son- Crowley in the Men of Letters Bunker. She stared up at Sam in a growl: "What in the hell is this?!"

"Insurance." Sam raised both her hands up in his, letting the iron chain that held the manacles together deliberately rattle audibly so that Rowena could hear them. "Comfortable?" the driest of smiles crossed his face before he let her hands drop like sacks of unwanted flour, and walked away from her to a wooden support beam in the center of the room where a long iron chain was wrapped around its base.

"We had an agreement, _giant!"_ Rowena spat in hatred from behind him.

"The agreement stands," Sam picked up the end of the chain in his hand and turned back around to Rowena letting all of his 6'4" height show, pointing his finger at her like a loaded gun. "You will decrypt the Book of the Damned, and find me a cure for my brother, and that is _all_ you will get from the book." He stared down Rowena for what she was, a tool. "I'll burn the book-" He looped the chain around a connection in one of the manacles. "And I'll _kill_ Crowley," he looped the chain through the remaining manacle, loose enough for Rowena to spread her hands wide enough to turn pages, but nothing else. "But until then-" He closed the gap between the iron chains and locked them with a small padlock, also etched in spell work.

"I'm your _slave?"_ Rowena mocked in a sing-song tone, her face half smug.

Sam bit her with a hard edged smile and held up the padlock's tiny key in her face before turning and walking away with it towards the steps.

"You can't!-" the long chain clanked and rattled. "You can't just _leave_ me here!" Rowena mewled in indignation.

Sam stopped walking, swallowing down something dangerous that wanted to just kill her. "You want out." He turned slightly, but didn't not face her fully, only letting her see him in silhouette, hands in his pockets, his gashed arm burning as he pocketed the manacle key, but not flinching this time from the pain. "Hurry up," he lowered his hands. "Get to work," he boomed his footsteps up the stairs and out the door.

Rowena's cursed screams traveled after him, but the noise stopped at the door due to the collection of spell work symbols at the right most window of the building, one that he had found in the Archives that blocked off any sound from where it was drawn. Sam did not turn around once walked out of the building into the early morning sunlight and climbed back into the Chevelle.

He took out his phone and saw two missed calls from Dean.

He dialed Dean's number, the call connected almost instantly. "Hey-"

" _Hey nothing man!"_ Dean's voice growled at him through the phone. _"You can't just slip half an index card note at me when you're only one night Post-Magnus Crazy Acid Trip, I was two seconds away from GPS'ing your ass!-"_

"Dude I'm sorry," Sam apologized, "Like you said, post Magnus crazy acid trip. I won't do it again."

" _You okay?"_ There was no ' _damn right you won't'_ no _'sorry is shit Sam'_ from Dean, only this in its place, the sense that something was wrong.

Sam moved his eyes up to the rearview mirror of the Chevelle. The abandoned building he had locked Rowena in glanced back at him.

" _Sammy?-"_

"Yeah, I'm good," Sam blinked and the image of the warehouse vanished and was replaced by sense of hearing Dean's voice. "I'm on my way back." He hung up the phone and drove back down the dirt path that led up the warehouse and back down to the street heading back.

 **xxxxXxxx**

R/R Please


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